Court Called Unfair to Drywallers : Palmdale: The immigrant laborers’ advocate criticizes a decision to hold their trial at City Hall and says bail is too high. A prosecutor discounts the complaints.

The head of the California Immigrant Workers Assn. on Monday criticized the Los Angeles County court system, saying a group of drywall workers arrested during protests in Palmdale is being treated unjustly.

Jose De Paz, the group’s executive director, held a press conference at Palmdale City Hall to complain because a trial of eight workers that began Monday is being held in a room at City Hall rather than at the courthouse in Lancaster.

De Paz also said he believes bail amounts were set too high and that the workers should get separate trials. He questioned why a judge from the Judicial Council of California, which provides judges to jurisdictions low on manpower, was assigned to hear the misdemeanor case.

“What the drywallers resent is this misapplication of justice of them,” De Paz said. “It’s just like the old West when someone was accused and they’d go out and rent a judge and set up court in a bar and they’re ready to hang them. That’s the mentality we see at work in this.”

Through a spokeswoman, Presiding Judge Richard Spann of the Antelope District declined to comment because the case is ongoing. However, Stephen Cooley, head deputy of the Antelope Valley branch of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, discounted each of De Paz’s points.

The trial against the drywallers is being held in a cultural center at City Hall because courtrooms in Lancaster are not large enough to hold the eight defendants, their attorneys and others, Cooley said. Bail, he said, was set according to court schedules.

Cooley said it is not unusual to use a judge assigned by the Judicial Council to fill in when regularly assigned judges are on vacation or the workload is heavy. And, he said, the state penal code says that defendants who commit the same criminal act should be tried jointly unless the judge orders otherwise.

“Everything that’s been done in these cases has been done according to the ordinary rules and procedures that assure due process,” he said.

De Paz, whose group is not a union but is coordinating the legal defense of arrested drywall workers, complained in October that sheriff’s deputies had used an indiscriminate “arrest now and ask questions later” approach with the drywallers.

The eight drywallers who began trial Monday were among 21 protesters who Cooley said pushed past a gate at a construction site in Palmdale on Oct. 27 and harassed working drywallers. One of the group members threw a rock through a window, Cooley said.

A security guard made a citizen’s arrest, and the protesters were later charged with trespassing to commit injury and rioting. One drywaller has already pleaded guilty. Trial for the other 12 is pending, Cooley said.

About 4,000 drywall workers are on strike, seeking higher wages and an agreement from contractors that they can be represented by the carpenters union. Currently, drywallers who work on residences have no union representation.

In mid-September the drywallers began picketing in the Palmdale area, Cooley said. The district attorney’s office subsequently filed charges against 54 people in 14 separate cases, three of which involve felonies, Cooley said.